


Catch the Moon as it Sets

by oceankat8



Category: Moon Knight (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Asylum imagery, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Gen, Its not a real mental institute, Magic, Takes place in the Death of Marc Spector Comic, Tony Stark is the director of shield, but Khonshu is not as much of a dick in this as he is there, its a Prison made to look like one from the outside, maybe OOC but no more than other comics make any characters different, mental health
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:46:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23194957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceankat8/pseuds/oceankat8
Summary: Marc had a plan, fake his death, disappear, leave the rest to Jake for a bit and just... fade away.Too bad he got caught first, and now he’s the first prisoner at Norman Osborn‘s fancy new Institute for the Dangerous and Insane.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 45





	1. Living my worst nightmare

Marc Spector should be dead right now, that’s what he’d planned, what he’d known was the only way to stop Osborn and his pet villains.

If Marc was dead, they wouldn’t have a reason to chase Jake down in Mexico. Wouldn’t have a reason to hurt Frenchie, or Marlene, or Crawley, or anyone else that dared associate themselves with Moon Knight. 

He really wished he was dead.

He could hear Osborn through the glass of his cell, bragging to the press about the facility they’d locked him in, how secure it was. How he’d stopped the threat of Moon Knight where Tony Stark had failed. 

“It’s truly state of the art,” Osborn said, knocking on the glass, “and I know it may seem archaic, but frankly some people belong in an asylum. This facility is to ensure that those people are where they belong. Away from everyone else.”

Marc grit his teeth as he sat with his back to the large glass wall, staring instead at the barred window of his room and counting the seconds until the sun set. 

This wasn’t a mental institute any more than the people working it were medical professionals. It was a prison with a problematic theme that Osborn was playing up for the cameras so that Stark couldn’t get him out on an insanity plea. 

And hadn’t that been a surprise, when Marc went to trial and found Tony Stark’s lawyer waiting for him. Well, to be fair, Steven was the one who went through the trial. He was better at those things. 

Marc never liked publicity, it’s why he was doing what he could to hide himself now. The cameras just outside the cell weighed heavily on his back as Osborn wouldn’t shut up.

“This is just the beginning for now, who knows how many other vigilantes are out there that shouldn’t be? That need the kind of help we are providing now?”

Marc almost asked Khonshu for the strength to break Osborn’s precious glass, almost offered to carve out his heart and serve it on a platter to feed his god. He wanted to. He wanted to so badly it ached. 

But even Khonshu’s strength, if he deigned to offer it, wouldn’t help him here. Not enough. It wasn’t a regular asylum after all. 

“Hell,” Osborn’s voice grew more muffled as he turned his back entirely to Marc’s cell, “even the Hulk wouldn’t find it easy to escape this place, and while we don’t know exactly what powers Marc Spector has-“

None, he didn’t have any, they aren’t his. They never were, not that it mattered, he hadn’t been able to use them since the first time he’d tried to renounce Khonshu. Marc’s thoughts spiraled, a familiar bitterness building.

“ **Well** ,” a small bird appeared on the corner of Marc’s bed, directly in front of him. It would be blocked from the cameras if it really existed, the shrike, if Marc recognized it correctly, a small, vicious thing. “ **This is unpleasant. Do tell me, my son, how do you plan on getting out of this one?”**

Marc scoffed and resisted the urge to throw his pillow at it. “Didn’t you hear? Some people just belong in an asylum.” He said it just soft enough to be drowned out by whatever obnoxious accomplishment Osborn was bragging about now. 

Not that it mattered, they already knew he was crazy.   
Khonshu just turned his head to look Marc in the eye. “ **You would let them cage you? My vengeance, my fist?”**

“I didn’t let them do anything,” Marc hissed. “If you actually helped me instead of throwing a tantrum every five seconds when you didn’t get your way we wouldn’t be here.” 

Marc closed his eyes, waiting for the insults, the degradation, everything he’d come to expect from Khonshu since he’d lost the use of his legs two years ago. 

But it never came, instead Osborn’s voice carried on, “We have the utmost confidence that this psychopath won’t be carving anything into anyone anytime soon.”

Marc opened his eyes, Khonshu was still there, but his gaze was directed behind him, towards the glass. The air felt heavy and Marc could feel something like anger but older, and darker, building inside of him. It wasn’t his, and when Khonshu turned to look back at him, feathers dropping from his form and the skeleton of the bird peeking through, he knew that something had changed. 

Funny, how god and avatar alike were so inconsistent. Constantly changing like the phases of the moon. 

The shrike turned towards him, beady eyes dark with the shadows of the night. “ **Shall we prove them wrong?** ”

Marc hadn’t fed Khonshu much, one heart couldn’t make up for years of avoidance, of dodging the part of him that had been Marc Spector the mercenary. 

But he’d lost that battle, likely before he’d ever fought it, and he could feel Khonshu’s hunger almost like it was his own. The rage was a familiar well to draw from, and he let it build until all he could see was the red of a harvest moon. 

Marc turned towards the glass, cameras flashing and Osborn’s back turned toward Marc dismissively as he bragged about his team, his success. He held back a growl. 

“Yes.”

He watched as Osborn postured, waited as the reporters asked him questions and held himself still until they were finished and walking away, steps echoing loudly down the hall of empty cells like his. 

He stood up, felt Khonshu’s eyes on him as he moved towards the glass, looking to see if they were truly gone. They were.

His cell was straight out of a Hannibal movie, every design choice painfully stereotypical as Marc looked around. There was one window, barred and too high to reach without assistance, set into flat white walls that still smelled like paint. The floor was cold concrete, his bed and toilet the only things standing on it. 

It was certainly not the kind of place that would help Marc’s mental health, but it did have what he needed. A metal bed frame.

“Can they see me?” He asked Khonshu, though he didn’t know why he bothered, Khonshu only ever did what he wanted regardless of Marc’s opinion of the matter. 

“ **Do you want them to?** ”

Marc blinked, surprised, Khonshu was being oddly charitable today. “Not yet.” 

First, he threw the thin mattress into an empty corner of the cell, holding back a smile as Khonshu had to adjust, skeletal bird wings flapping as he flew to land on the window ledge instead. The moon was full behind him.

Marc used his body’s weight to break the rest of the bed, twisting the frame until the metal came apart easily. The bolts that had held it to the ground were clearly inferior, and the metal itself was weak and pliant in Marc’s grip. 

“Sure,” he muttered, “like this place could hold the Hulk.” 

Khonshu was silent still, and the metal leg in his hands was a familiar weight, reminding Marc of his truncheons before they had been confiscated. 

If he closed his eyes he could almost pretend he hadn’t woken up here, weaponless and disgraced. In his own personal nightmare. 

White walls and barred windows, the only things missing was a padded cell and a straight jacket. Maybe Osborn hadn’t thought that would be necessary, that Marc didn’t pose a threat now that he was caged. 

He was wrong. 

The glass didn’t shatter, and Marc vaguely remembered Osborn mentioning something about how high tech they were, shatter-proof as he put it. A new design. 

But it did crack, a small, crooked line from where the metal leg had slammed against it. So Marc hit it again, the metal bending and twisting with the force of it until the leg was useless entirely and Marc had to throw it away, choosing instead to pound his fists against the glass until his knuckles were bloodied.

Every new crack increased his desperation, the sound loud and echoing down the rows of empty cells where Marc knew someone could hear and was sending someone to stop him. 

If he had any luck Osborn was already halfway across the asylum. 

The Asylum. 

Marc needed to get out of here.

He couldn’t… he couldn’t stay.

The glass shattered just as he saw guards come running down the hall, “how the hell did he-?”

“Stop! Spector!”

“You’re not going anywhere, Nutjob!”

“ **Hmm** ,” Khonshu was at the end of the hall, full suit and tie on what could be mistaken for a human body if it wasn’t for the skeletal bird head cocked towards him, **“I do not believe that one is a medical professional. You should kill him.”**

Marc just shook his head and ran towards him, “no, they’re not- they’re innocent.” 

“ **Hardly**.”

Marc ran through Khonshu, taking a sharp left and sending him a small prayer: let this be the right way.   
It must have been, since he saw Khonshu once more standing at the end of the hall. This time he pointed. 

“I just killed someone for you. Ever think of going on a diet?” Marc asked. Antagonizing Khonshu the one time he was actually helping probably wasn’t a good idea, but Marc had been dealing with enough of Khonshu’s shit recently that sending some back only felt fair.

“ **Starved is not a good look on me, my son.”**

Marc continued following the path Khonshu showed him, but it was only a matter of time before he was surrounded, would need to fight his way out. And knowing Khonshu, that time was likely to be sooner rather than later. 

So he bared his teeth in an approximation of a smile and said, “Yeah. You’re kind of an asshole when you’re hungry.” 

He turned another corner only to see a group of guards at the end of the hall, shooting a glare at Khonshu and ignoring the chuckle of amusement he received. Marc turned around only to see another dozen or so closing in on him from behind as well.   
Well, it was now or never. 

Making a split second decision, Marc ran in the direction Khonshu had originally led him and built his momentum back up. 

Some of the guards, upon realizing that he wasn’t going to stop, started backing away themselves, leaving space for him to shove his way through. 

But there was too many of them for him to fight and they knew it, their confidence bolstered by their numbers until he took down the first two, and then more. All fists and low kicks, the blood on his knuckles a mix of his own from earlier, and new, fresh blood as he carved his way through the guards. 

It didn’t matter, as much as Marc fought tooth and nail and prayed to his god for the strength to win, every person that fell was replaced by more and the guards that had chased him down the hall had caught up as well, leaving Marc grossly outnumbered and losing. 

“Khonshu give me strength,” he muttered once more, ignoring the urge to look into his assailants' hearts, to see who truly deserved his mercy and who would do the world better as a meal for his god. He wasn’t going to kill anyone. 

Not yet.

He got one of them in the gut, someone else got him in the knee, exploding pain all throughout his body and nearly taking him down. But he shifted his weight, took a punch to the face, and threw himself backwards, taking out two of the guards at once. 

Even with their numbers these guards weren’t exactly an impressive bunch. 

“ **You would be winning if you didn’t hold yourself back.** ”

Marc felt Khonshu’s disapproval drip down his spine and grimaced. He dodged a fist, grabbed it, and twisted it back to break it before grabbing the wrists owner and using him as a shield against two of his comrades. 

“They haven’t done anything,” Marc argued, his next punch landing a bit harder than he’d planned.

Khonshu sighed, “ **It was fun while it lasted.** ”

Marc turned to him in confusion before a clicking sound drew his attention up. There were vents above him, now open and spewing forth an unfamiliar green gas. “Khonshu…”

He fought to keep his eyes from closing, the world, as violent as it was, going dark around him. 

  
When he awoke again it was painful, every bruise and ache he’d earned trying to escape making themselves known. 

Marc groaned and forced himself to sit up, “Fuck.” He was in a straight-jacket, hands tied tight around him and useless. 

Looking around Marc noticed the distinct change in his surroundings as well, his cell now four solid walls, padded along with the floor and ceiling, and no bed to be seen. Osborn must have learned his lesson then. 

“ **A wasted opportunity.** ”

Marc was kneeling, Khonshu sitting before him in his skeletal form, cobwebs seemingly etched into the scenery around him, reminding Marc just how old Khonshu was despite how petulant he could be. 

“I’m sorry.” Marc felt the feeling of failure weighing on him, bitter and familiar. He could do nothing but look away, hands restrained as they were, but even that was halted as Khonshu’s gloved hand lifted his chin, turning Marc’s gaze back toward him. 

It was cold and dry, almost a comfort and Marc had to fight the urge to lean into it. He was so rarely comforted by his god. 

Khonshu knelt down, his crisp white suit moving as if he had form, substance beyond the bones that showed through. The sockets of his eyes were dark, an endless void that held the entirety of the galaxy behind them and Marc fought down another wave of disappointment.

“ **This is difficult for you, I know,** ” his hand moved to brush Marc’s hair back off of his face, more gentle than anything he’d come to expect from Khonshu, “ **but you cannot do my work caged, Marc.** ”

“No,” Marc agreed and the room reappeared around him, Khonshu nowhere to be seen. Instead he found himself kneeling before the barred window, moonlight a gentle caress against his skin. 

The door opened. 

“Treatment time,” said a large, well built man dressed as a nurse. He’d entered with two others that had similar builds and identical clothing, one of which was holding a syringe. 

Marc found himself backing away from them, eyes locked on the syringe and arms tugging fruitlessly against his restraints. “DID doesn’t have a pharmaceutical treatment.”

The nurse looked at him strangely, “I don’t know what the fuck any of that means, hold him still.” 

It wasn’t hard to do. Marc fought against it, trying to bite and kick, but all they needed to do was shove his head to the side and hold it as goon number three injected the drug into Marc’s neck. 

They dropped him. The next fifteen minutes or so had his mind drifting, images of long hallways and empty cages interspersed with stone walls and sand as he was dragged along. 

It was disjointed, unconnected, and Marc was having trouble connecting one thought with the next. 

“Khonshu,” Marc whispered the first thing that came to his mind as he fought to collect his thoughts. 

“He’s not here, Spector,” an unfamiliar voice spoke, professional and clinical. “But since you’re feeling better, why don’t we talk about your registration with the Hero Initiative?”

“Nngh… had to…” his head hurt, where was Khonshu? “It interfered… mission.”

“What mission, Marc?” 

Marc tried to look around. He was in an office, but it was bright, too bright. He almost felt like he was gazing directly into the sun, the pain digging into his eyes and spreading into the rest of his brain. He closed his eyes.

“What did you give me?”

“Stay focused, Marc,” the voice said, “Answer the question. What is your mission?”

He looked around for Khonshu, but he still wasn’t there, so he responded, “Protect the … travelers in the night.”

“So you lied.”

“Didn’t lie,” Marc shook his head, “not really. Khonshu-“ 

He was real. It wasn’t Marc’s fault no one could see him. 

“Ignoring the mess you made of the psych eval, you were registered as not having any powers.”

The voice was sharp, confident and Marc’s fingers itched for the sharp bite of a moon dart. Would Khonshu want his heart? No, Marc didn’t do that anymore.

Where was Khonshu?

“I don’t.” His mouth felt like cotton, but the office was getting clearer, as was the person behind the desk. “Have any powers.”

“You broke through a glass wall specially designed to hold people far stronger than you.” The voice was sounding annoyed now, and Marc felt himself get frustrated. If anything, he should be the one annoyed. If this was supposed to be a psychiatrist, why had they drugged him up to his gills? 

It would hardly be a productive session, as if that had ever been the intent.

“Apparently not.” Marc bit out a smile, still unable to make out the owner of the voice as he fought against the brightness of the lights.

He heard the tap of a pen against wood, “You outran almost thirty elite guards for over half an hour in a facility you’ve never been in but somehow knew exactly where to run in order to escape.”

“Khonshu willed it.”

The man behind the desk made an unimpressed noise. “Khonshu isn’t real, he’s a manifestation of your schizophrenia, something we need to work on.”

“I’m fine,” Marc growled. So this was supposed to be the doctor. He vaguely wondered at his qualifications, his reason for being here at Osborn’s sham of an institution. 

“Fine?” There was a sharp laugh. "You carved crescent moons into people foreheads, you pushed a man off a roof in front of Tony Stark.”

“Khonshu-“ Marc started to explain, the connection he felt with his god was starting to become clearer as the fog left his mind. 

He could almost feel him, Marc strained towards the feeling, desperate.

“Tsk,” the doctor just shook his head, “we are going to try and cut you off from that. This next part, I’m afraid, won’t be pleasant.”

“ **Marc**.”

But the warning came too late. Marc hadn’t noticed the nurses re-enter the office, at least not until the needle was back in his neck. 


	2. Meet the crew

It took longer this time, to feel Khonshu’s presence. Maybe it was because he wasn’t fighting so hard for it, his desperation fading as he stared up at the blank white ceiling. The bed was too soft and lacked the support that springs had given the one he’d destroyed in his escape attempt. 

**“When did you lose your dignity, my Knight?”**

Marc’s head was at Khonshu’s feet, still lying prone on his back as he looked up at his god. “When I started worshiping you.”

Marc forced himself to sit up, they hadn’t bothered strapping him back into the straight-jacket this time. The drug still felt heavy in his system and he fought the urge to vomit. 

“Where did you go? I couldn’t hear you,” Marc asked, taking a moment to feel the bond more intimately in his mind. Khonshu was a part of him, had always been in some ways and it had hurt to feel cut off from him, from everything. It was almost like someone had tried to build a wall in the middle of his brain, ripping and tearing at the seams of his mind. 

“ **No, I rather suppose you couldn’t. I doubt you could do much of anything in that state.”** Khonshu’s irritation was familiar and Marc let it scratch at him, felt it grit around him like sand. 

What was surprising, was that the irritation didn’t seem to be pointed at him. It was almost refreshing if Marc didn’t think it was so bizarre.

“They said it was medicine." Marc was sitting next to Khonshu’s throne, leaning slightly into him and trying not to think about how different it felt when he wasn’t being blocked off, forcefully separated. 

Khonshu carded a hand through his hair and Marc felt his headache fade away. Funny, how he could heal simple things like this, but left him crippled and unable to walk for years. 

“ **Nothing here is medicine, my son.”** The hand stilled, pulling away from him. 

Marc just growled, “I’ll kill him.” He didn’t mean to say it, at least not out loud, but he could feel Khonshu’s approval nonetheless. 

He turned his head away.

Khonshu made a sound not unlike bones clinking together, it could have been his approximation of a hum, or a sigh, or some other thing all together. “ **I wonder what other wanderers of the night have found themselves here.”**

Marc shook his head, “Doesn’t matter.” 

When he looked up again, Khonshu’s figure was terrifying, a being beyond the world and held here only by his connection with Marc but so much more than anything or anyone could ever properly comprehend. Marc felt himself falling into something then. It could have been the dark, empty gaze of Khonshu, Marc's faith, so recently revisited, even his own insanity. But Marc let himself fall into it for once, stopped fighting against that part of him he’d tried to destroy for so long. 

“ **And why is that?** ” Khonshu asked, despite knowing the answer. 

“Because I am going to burn this place down, in your name,” Marc admitted, ignoring Khonshu’s approval and pushing away from him, standing under his own support. 

He looked around him then. He wasn’t in the padded cell anymore, but he also knew that he hadn’t left. This was just somewhere else as well, laid over top of it. Was he in his own mind? An escape mechanism in response to his imprisonment?

Or had Khonshu brought him here for another reason? What was different about this as opposed to when he saw Khonshu overlaid in the world around him. Was he more present? Was Marc?

“ **You will** ,” if Khonshu could smile, Marc was sure it would be indulgent now, “ **won’t you**?”

The words were warm and Marc pretended not to feel a rush of pride, it was useless to him here after all. It had been useless to him entirely for a long time. 

Marc wet his lips, he’d been thirsty when he woke up, his mouth full of cotton and horribly uncomfortable. But he could feel none of it now, just the moonlight as it danced around him and Khonshu. 

He needed to know. “Where were you really?”

Khonshu sighed and stood up from his makeshift throne as it faded into sand behind him. He stood close enough that Marc could reach out and grab him if he’d wanted, but no closer. 

“ **With you** ,” he said, something unreadable in the harsh lines that made up his current form. “ **Always**.”

But he faded away as the room came back into focus, and the feeling reminded Marc distinctly of those colored glasses one could wear while reading a book. Where the blue would show you one thing, and the red something else. 

The feeling of moonlight had faded as well, the beginnings of the morning sun streaming gently through the small window above him. It was an unnecessary reminder that he was really here, that it wasn’t just a horrible dream that Khonshu had concocted to torture him for not feeding him properly. 

Marc thought back to his failed escape attempt. Khonshu had given him everything he’d needed, had listened to his prayers and guided his way. Marc hadn’t felt so alive, so complete, in years. The feeling of the full moon coursing through his veins was electric, intoxicating… nice, almost. 

Not that he’d ever admit it to Khonshu, the last thing he needed was to stoke the smug bastard’s ego. He didn’t want to admit that he’d been right all along, that he’d missed it as much as he did. 

So instead he took a deep breath, then another, used a grounding technique he’d learned as a child, at a different institution to help calm his mind and drift off into a more natural sleep than the drugged stupor he’d been left in for most of the day. 

Maybe this time when he awakes, he won’t feel like crap. 

He still felt like crap. Even worse, he woke up to a loud hammering sound echoing down from above him. 

“The hell?” He whispered, dragging his eyes open. It was still day time, the sun high in the sky and painfully bright as he squinted against it.

He tried to look up at his one window, to try and see if he could get a glimpse of what was going on, what they were planning to do. But all he could see were the silhouettes of people moving around outside it. 

Was he on the first floor? That didn’t quite make sense, but if not, how were there people there, directly outside his one sliver of access to the outside world? 

Marc squinted, waiting for his eyes to adjust. “What are they …?” he started to ask before he saw the silhouettes slowly move a thick slab of something over the window, blocking it and all of the world’s light from him.

His heart dropped into his stomach, no, no, they couldn’t. 

“Hey!” he shouted, fist slamming against the wall to get their attention. They ignored him. The light fading quickly as whatever it was they were moving to cover the window was slipped into place. 

“You can’t do that. You…” The moon. He won’t be able to see the Moon. “I need that.”

His voice was soft, far too soft for them to hear, but it didn’t matter. It never would. Not anymore. 

Now he was just Osborn’s pet project, the cape who went loony, the threat he caught and caged and was going to ‘fix’. Or at least put up enough of a show to convince the world he had tried before throwing away the keys forever. 

It should have been more dramatic, the moment the window was completely sealed. By all means the entire room should have gone dark, leaving Marc alone in the shadows and separated entirely from the world. But that would have been too familiar, a comfort, and instead Marc was left in the company of dull fluorescents hanging above him, their low buzz suddenly louder than they had any right being. 

“I’m not going to cry over a fucking window,” Jake muttered. He didn’t care as much as Marc, never did really. Out of all of them he’d been the most self reliant, earning his own money, making his own friends, building his own life. Before it toppled around him.

But he still felt the sting of it, underneath, Marc’s panic and fear burned into their shared conscience. Jake growled, “You know, none of this would have happened if you hadn’t fucked Marc up so bad.”

“ **I would have never gone to such drastic measures, if you and Steven hadn’t conspired to starve me,** ” Khonshu says, from a corner of the room more shadowed than the rest. He looked tired, almost ragged, and Jake wondered how well he took to his avatar being imprisoned. 

Marc was his way into the world after all, locking him away from it couldn’t be pleasant. Then again, Jake almost figured it served him right, the way Khonshu had been acting. 

But Marc didn’t deserve this, and dammit, neither did Jake, or Steven.

So Jake just threw a pillow through Khonshu’s form, causing him to dissolve and reappear in the corner, taller, darker, twisted into a visual threat of claws and ancient bones that would frighten even the toughest mentalities. 

But Khonshu didn’t choose his priests because of their strengths, in fact, looking at his preference for Marc, it was likely he chose them for the exact opposite. It worried Jake, that Khonshu might have something planned for Marc, that Khonshu was pushing him so close to breaking not to make him stronger, but to destroy what little of himself Marc had left so he could collect the broken pieces in the end. 

Whatever the reason for that could be was far above Jake’s paygrade, however. 

Khonshu was simply a fact of their life. An annoying constant that came and went when it pleased him, and Jake had never had the good sense to feel threatened by him. “Marc doesn’t need more blood on his hands.”

“ **On the contrary** ,” Khonshu said lowly as he fixed his tie, collecting his form back into a more manageable one. “ **If we want to get out of here, that is going to be exactly what he needs.”**

Jake ignored the truth of that, tried not to think about how much stronger Marc had been under the last full moon. How it had only happened after pushing Knowels off a building. 

How familiar the feeling had been to them all. 

Marc had fallen in that moment, back into who he’d been before, when Khonshu had first chosen him and he knew it. They all did, it was why they had made the plan, why Marc had insisted Jake take over before he killed again. 

Because he would. For Khonshu. 

Jake shook his head and made an aborted movement to pull down a cap he didn’t have. He missed his mustache. “How much juice do you have left anyways?”

Jake decided to lean back against the wall. At the very least he could make himself comfortable, even in a padded cell. Didn’t have to think about how he was locked here against his will by Norman fucking Osborn. 

Khonshu glared, and Jake just chuckled. He knew the god preferred Marc, and his strange devotion over Jake’s own brand of belief. But a god needed all types of followers, and Khonshu didn’t have many priests. Especially not ones that knew him so intimately. 

“ **Enough** ,” he said simply. But then he turned his gaze toward the sealed window, shadows draped thickly over him and making it look like he was standing somewhere completely different from the soft padded cell. “ **But I fear it will not last, if what they have planned for Marc sees fruition.** ”

Jake mulled that over for a minute before responding. 

He was right after all. Marc wasn’t in a good place, hadn’t been for a long time. His reaction to the window was only a part of that, something so simple never should have brought Jake out so suddenly, but even a single tear can cause a cup to overflow. And the rest of them were only as stable as Marc was. 

If the doctor and his lackeys succeeded in cutting Marc off entirely from Khonshu, forcing his faith to waiver once more, Jake didn’t know where they’d be. How Khonshu would react to his Avatar being turned from him, even temporarily, once more. 

How Marc would react to losing another part of himself that he’d worked so hard to forge. Jake didn’t like the thought of Marc losing himself, of him and Steven being lost in their shared madness again. 

Even if he’d get to see Khonshu rightly fucked over by it. 

Khonshu must have read that last thought in his face, because he made a sound like a tsk, a rattle of bones in sand. “ **You are certainly earning your position as my least favorite priest**.”

Jake just smiled and flipped him the bird. It was nice to know his work was paying off. But now, he needed to do some thinking if he wanted to try and figure a way out of here, and three heads were better than one. 

Marc woke up to someone entering his cell. He groaned and glared up with bloodshot eyes as the fluorescents were clicked back on above him. 

They’d been trying to reset his circadian rhythm, force him awake during the day, when he was weaker- the panel over the window propped open to allow unfiltered sunlight to shine obnoxiously into his cell- and force him to sleep when the moon was out. 

He’d found himself in that strange mindscape with Khonshu and the others more and more often now, it was starting to become more difficult to tell what was real, what was him awake and what was him asleep. 

Other than that, the doctor’s plan wasn’t really working. He still felt more awake in the dark, the sunlight nothing if not an irritation. But it had been too long since he’d seen the moon, and it left him jumpy, itching in his skin and needing to do something. 

Marc’s legs still hurt at the knees, but he fought through it as always, and forced himself into a crouch as the intruders walked closer. 

“Aw, fuck,” the first one said. It was the same group of nurses that always came in, that drugged him and dragged him out to his ‘sessions with the good doctor’. “It’s the feral one.”

The fight wasn’t impressive. Marc was tired and the drugs were building up inside of him use after use, leaving him softer than he was used to, dulling his instincts and his ability to fight. He was hardly in vigilante shape anymore. 

Nonetheless, Marc had tried to keep up with the phases of the moon, but without seeing it, all he could tell was that it was waning, taking what little strength he had left with it. 

Though, he at least managed to get a few bites in before they injected him with the drug again. 

“And here I was thinking we were getting somewhere.” The doctor’s voice wafted through the air, mixing with the other sounds pounding loudly in his head. Marc really was sick of this particular drug. 

Marc had expected them to start him on psychotherapy, force him into a regular routine with strictly monitored habits and the occasional talk therapy. Or really anything vaguely in the realm of actually trying to help with his plethora of mental problems. Even if some of the most noticeable symptoms were more because of Khonshu than anything else. 

But instead they had kept him drugged and regularly dragged him back to this office, with the same doctor asking him questions, grilling him on his time with the Avengers, his other personalities, how he broke the window of his original cell one day but couldn’t fight off three grown men with a needle a few weeks later. 

He’d long since given up trying to get anything other than irritation from these sessions. 

“Hmmm. Uncooperative today.” The Doctor sighed, a muttered ‘as usual’ barely audible as he straightened whatever paperwork he had at his desk. “Can I speak with Jake then? He always seems to have something to say.”

“No.” Marc looked away. The drugs made him feel cut off, separated from the others. He wouldn’t call on them even if he wanted to cooperate. He could handle ignoring a bunch of prying questions on his own after all.

The doctor tried again, “What about Steven then?”

Marc scowled, “Steven’s too good for you.”

The doctor seemed to pause at that, looking towards Marc with an unreadable expression. There was a window behind him, and Marc fought not to squint against the sunlight pouring into the room. 

He missed the moon. 

“Interesting,” the doctor finally said, finally looking down at his notes instead of directly at Marc. “Steven and Jake seem to share a similar protective instinct towards you, and each other. I’d almost compare it to having brothers. Do you have any actual siblings Marc?”

He flinched and ran his hand across his face as if he could wipe away the memories that suddenly bubbled to the forefront of his mind. Randall. Marc shook his head, trying to dislodge the discomfort, the film that had settled over his mind.

The doctor just smiled at him, a sharp, ugly thing that had Marc wishing he could Khonshu right now, whispering in his ear to be careful with this one, he’s dangerous. 

“I think that’s something I can work with.”

  
They had taken to increasing the dosage so they wouldn’t have to give him more every time they moved him from one place to another. The amount they were giving him now was enough to keep him out for most of the day before he could claw his way back into consciousness as the sun set and the lights clicked off.

Marc wondered how much of that was the drug wearing off and how much was Khonshu trying to pull Marc back to him. Funny how Marc had spent the better part of the last year trying to get Khonshu to shut up, only to so keenly feel the loss when his wish was granted.

He was back in the straight jacket, curled into a corner of the room like a character in one of those cheap horror movies Marc had never liked, but Steven would watch just to have an excuse for Marlene to curl into him with every jump scare. 

The muzzle they’d forced him into for biting the nurses was archaic and made of twisted metal, biting into his skin with how tight they’d strapped it on. Marc tried using his knees to loosen it at first, trying to get it off without the use of his hands.

“That was dumb," Jake said, standing in Marc’s periphery, “we were trying to get their guard down.”

Rolling his eyes, Marc gave up on getting the muzzle off so easily. He leaned back against the padded wall and glared up at the lights. It wouldn’t be long till they clicked off. “Their guard wasn’t going down.”

Steven appeared too, his gaze pointed cautiously toward the door. 

“He’s right, Jake. It doesn’t matter how unprepared they are, if they keep drugging us there isn’t anything we can do. The plan isn’t working, it’s only killing time we don’t have.”

Marc nodded, “As it is, we need to take every inch we can, push and keep pushing.”

It was Jake’s turn to roll his eyes, “Yeah, ‘cause getting muzzled like a dog is really helping our cause here.” 

“ **It will** ,” Khonshu’s voice was an unexpected comfort, a steady hand in a world long shaken. 

It was time, the lights above finally turned off and Marc took a deep breath, relaxed his shoulders, and let go of the slack he’d been gripping like a vice since they buckled the straight jacket on him. 

“ **Are you ready, my son**?” Khonshu lifted his hand to Marc’s cheek, cradling his jaw, and Marc leaned into it, relaxing his shoulders further. “ **This will hurt.** ”

Marc nodded before dislocating his shoulder, the loudness of the crack swallowed in the silence of the padded cell around him. It did hurt, but the muzzle helped to muffle his scream. 

What came next was the easy part, twisting his body underneath the loosed material and undoing the straps, freeing his arms. 

When he finally got the muzzle off he paused for a second to stretch out his jaw, before slamming his shoulder back into place and using his fist to bite down another scream. This was going to hurt in the morning. 

Once the sharp edge of the pain has dulled enough, he set about tearing the muzzle apart, twisting the metal into something usable. A weapon. 

Then he waited, let sleep slowly overcome him as he sat against the wall underneath where he knew the camera watching him to be. The moon had started waxing again, he knew, but it was far from full and Marc found himself counting the seconds as he felt it rise. 

If he tried, he could almost feel the pull of it underneath his skin, dripping through his veins. It wasn’t quite the strength of a full moon, but it was enough that the pain of his shoulder dulled just slightly and he almost smiled. 

He really hoped it was enough. 

He took a piece of the twisted metal from his muzzle and hoped that the half-hearted lessons Frenchie had taught him about lock picking stuck better than the ones about piloting. 

First he had to dig into the wall, wedge loose the part that hid the locking mechanism, and then he got to work. It took a longer time than Marc had hoped, and his shoulder and knees were aching excruciatingly by the time he heard the satisfying sound of a click, and the door slid open. 

An alarm broke the silence, echoing down the empty corridors loud enough to wake the dead at the temple of Anubis and Marc was running. 

He heard one of the nurses shouting as they ran towards him, frustration lacing his words, “This is it. I’m having a talk with the doc. There’s no reason why we can’t keep this asshole drugged 24/7.” 

“Uh, Greg?” One of his companions said, uncertain, “Maybe we should leave this to the actual guards?”

But it was too late. Marc had stopped running, allowing the three of them close. Greg was the largest one, the violent one that enjoyed making sure Marc couldn’t fight back. 

Marc remembered how his blood tasted underneath his teeth and felt Khonshu’s coo in his ear. 

“Greg Simson,” Marc said, his voice deep, “You have a dark past don’t you? Do you hear the cries of vengeance against you?”

The other two looked at Greg and backed subtly away. Marc just grinned and gripped the twisted metal in his hand tighter. They weren’t any better, he could see years of cruelty etched into their hearts. It was likely what had attracted them to this job in the first place. 

Power over the weak.

He took a step forward before he remembered what he was supposed to be doing. Now wasn’t the time for his own vengeance. 

“ **Isn’t it?** ” Khonshu purred, “ **you are not the only one who has been hurt by them**.”

Marc slashed out with his fist, the familiar feel of metal biting into flesh rewarding Marc with a spike of adrenaline that made taking out the other two just as easy. 

He could feel Khonshu’s pleasure as he stood over them, “ **Good boy.** ” 

He started to run again, ignoring how he felt better almost immediately. Khonshu temporarily sated, but still eager for more.

He could wait, Marc needed to get out of here.


	3. And Scene!

  
Marc walked the familiar route to the doctor’s office, the hallway sharp and clear in a way he hadn’t seen it before. 

Luckily there wasn’t anyone else in the way, then again, they were probably more concerned with the many paths that might actually lead out of the institution. Not further in.

The door was unassuming. Nothing to denote its importance beyond a single plaque with the doctor’s name. Nothing about it was recognizable to a mind free of drugs. It lacked the looming presence Marc had always assumed it had. Marc walked through, quickly. 

He didn’t have time to waste looking around, the alarms were still blaring and Marc had no doubt that the exits were already being taken care of. The next step would be moving inwards, cutting off any branching paths and trapping him in a corner. 

Which was fine. Marc had something else to worry about.

He’d moved behind the desk and started up the computer. But he couldn’t get in.

“It needs a password,” Steven sighed. “You do realize I’m not … I can’t hack into a computer.”

Marc was off in the corner of his eye, frustrated and scowling at Steven. “Then we try guessing. Out of the three of us, you’re the one with the most computer experience.”

Steven just sighed again, typing the most common passwords first, “Yes, doing _office_ work. I don’t exactly have experience with corporate espionage. It’s always been _my_ company.”

“Not always,” Marc said. 

Steven shook his head, “Weren’t you the one in the CIA? Didn’t they teach you to hack?” 

“... they might have.” 

But he couldn’t remember. None of them really could. That part of their life was mostly broken fragments and miscellaneous skill sets they had collected before Marc decided to go rogue entirely. 

“Try JaneDear96,” Jake said, making an appearance.

Steven did, the screen finally giving access. “How-?”

Jake rolled his eyes, pointing at the picture frame sitting next to the computer. There was a sticky note stuck unceremoniously to the glass. “I pay attention.” 

Marc almost laughed and Steven sat down in the doctor’s chair, getting comfortable before opening Outlook. 

It only took about a minute after that before Steven was logging back off and leaving the office. “Marc, I hope you’re right about this. The last time we saw him wasn’t exactly pleasant.”

“It’ll work,” Marc assured him. “Take a left.”

Steven did, recognizing the path. “This just leads back to-“

“I know. Must be crazy right?” He smiled. And Steven kept walking, he had to stop himself from rolling his eyes at Marc’s joke. It really was in poor taste. “They won’t be expecting it, and we aren’t making it out of here anyways. Not today.”

So Steven walked back to their cell, stepping carefully over the nurses Marc had… defeated. He didn’t look down. 

The alarm was still blaring, flashing lights and thundering noises. But this hall stayed quiet. Marc was right, they weren’t expecting this.

Not that it mattered, the cat that catches the canary doesn’t expect the doomed bird to run right back into its mouth. Steven took a deep breath. 

And closed the door behind him. 

The sirens were quieter from inside the cell, swallowed up by the padding and thick iron walls underneath. Marc looked up at the covered window and closed his eyes against the glare of the light. 

“I’m taking a nap.”

There was no way to wash the blood off, so Marc stripped off his shirt and used it to wipe off as much as he could before he curled into his bed. The sheets were white and cold, and it wasn’t long before Marc let himself drift off. 

Let them look for him. It’s not an escape attempt if he doesn’t actually try to leave after all.

  
Steven was the one that woke up. The first thing he did was try the door, but the panel had been replaced, and the door was locked once more. 

“Marc, I really hope you’re right about this,” Steven whispered. He wasn’t looking forward to whatever came next. 

He didn’t really like conflict, tended to leave that to Marc, or Jake even. He felt far more comfortable in a board room, or a studio. Places neither Marc nor Jake would be caught dead in.

It wasn’t that Steven didn’t have a backbone or anything, he would just prefer to get along with people. He’d been told he could be quite charming when he wanted to, and that was useful. It came in handy more often, Steven would argue, than just punching everyone that got in the way and telling them to run. 

There was a reason, out of the three of them, that he was the one with a permanent residence. Marc tended to collect too many death threats to have his own. 

Though, the current situation certainly made it difficult for it to matter. They never did well in captivity, afterall. 

Then again, it was starting to seem like they simply didn’t do well anywhere.

Marlene had certainly seemed to think so. And it was difficult to deny when part of you was out carving crescents into people’s foreheads because a hungry moon god was constantly whispering in their ear about how dark the world was and vengeance etc…

It wasn’t too long before someone was at the door.

Lucky for Steven, that someone was Osborn himself. And he did not look happy.

“Norman, what are you doing all the way out here?” Steven asked, all sparkling innocence and smooth charm. 

“You know damn well why I’m here, Spector,” Osborn practically spat. He had a new team of ‘elite’ guards behind him, and no doubt a significant amount of his own tech hidden in his clothing. 

“It’s Steven, actually. We’ve met before.” He kept his tone pleasant, “and I can’t say I’m much of a mind reader.”

That only seemed to anger Osborn more, his face turning an almost cherry red in stark contrast to his infamous costume. Steven couldn’t help but feel it suited him much better than the smarmy confidence he’d worn at the trial. 

“This kind of shit is why you’re here, you know damn well what you did to those guards.”

He didn’t. Steven hadn’t looked, hadn't wanted to. He could probably ask Marc, but he really didn’t want a deadpan description of what Khonshu had him do to some nurse with an authority problem. 

Steven felt a sharp sting in his chest, not unlike grief or disappointment, and recognized it as Marc’s. He swallowed the guilt and continued his act. Marc was right. He wasn’t being fair. 

Then again, it’s not like Khonshu told Steven what the man had done before he worked here. Or what he did in his off time, or whatever it was that made Marc’s hesitance turn so sharply into determination. 

“What Marc did? I wasn’t paying attention. I get queasy at the sight of blood,” Steven lied.

“Just shut up and follow me.” Osborn had apparently grown tired of Steven’s act, but Steven rarely got the satisfaction of irritating a man who had literally ruined what was left of his shambled life. 

“Oh? Where are we going? Are you going to… hold me accountable for my actions?”

Osborn’s pace quickened and it was almost difficult to keep up with him barefoot. Steven missed his shoes, they were expensive and comfortable. Probably blown to pieces. Or sold on auction. 

Hey, maybe Frenchie got them in his will. No, that was only if Marc died. And Khonshu had made it pretty clear that they wouldn’t be getting out of this so easily. 

He was fond of Marc after all, in his own weird Egyptian-god way. He was still an ass though. 

Osborn’s shoulders were stiff, as if he was irritated by something, and Steven decided that it would be easier on his feet to slow down instead of struggling to catch up. 

Fortunately Osborn noticed, forcing his gate to slow to match Steven’s. At least until he tired of it and gestured to the nearest two ‘elite’ guards to grab either of his arms and practically drag him along at the pace Osborn preferred. 

“You haven’t told me where we’re going.” Steven squawked. He didn’t like being manhandled. 

Osborn threw a glare at him before answering through gritted teeth. 

“You have a phone call.”

Marc smiled, looks like it had worked after all.

The room was supposed to be private, a place for people to talk to their lawyers, provided they still had one. But Marc had long since learned he didn’t have something as basic and humane as privacy here. It was prison, a cage. A place for animals that couldn’t be allowed back with the human population. Or for humans that didn’t fit the proper mold that was made for them. 

Usually more the latter. 

“Hello?” Marc said into the receiver. He wasn’t sure what to expect. But Tony Stark’s grating playboy drawl set loose a significant amount of tension that he’d been holding in.

He’d actually called back. 

“Marc! Got your email. Gotta say, wasn’t expecting it. Considering you’re in basically what amounts to maximum security, but I did read about your little walk yesterday.”

Yeah, he was afraid of that. Marc stayed silent, he needed to be careful what he said with Osborn in the room next door. 

“... it doesn’t fit your MO. I thought you were trying not to kill.”

Marc closed his eyes. Stark was being his usual self and it was annoying. But Marc needed him if he was ever going to get out of here well enough to remember to burn the place down.

“It wasn’t getting me anywhere. Did you look him up?”

The line was quiet for a bit, Stark was probably actually trying to think things through before saying them. To be fair, he was a clever man when he wasn’t pretending otherwise. 

“Knowels? Yeah, I looked him up. Thought it was obvious when I sent you my lawyer.”

Marc rolled his eyes, “It was. That’s why I’m not talking about him.”

“Ah,” Stark says as if he didn’t know exactly what Marc meant. “Simson. Yes, actually, I did. Quite the resume, not allowed near kids, read up on it.”

“And?”

Marc could hear Stark sigh heavily through the phone, “And I can’t say I’m sad to see him go, but there’s no way you could have known any of that.”

“I didn’t.” He hadn’t been part of the plan either, not really, but Khonshu had been eager, and Marc could still feel the anger and festering frustration as he continued to be rendered helpless in front of the type of man who enjoyed it far too much. 

“... Marc, you need help.” His voice was soft, the tail end of a fight he’d been having against himself with no clear end. 

Marc swallowed back an emotion he couldn’t afford to have. “Then get me help. Because this isn’t it.” 

“I have men looking into the institution right now-“ Stark continued before Marc could interrupt, “on the down-low. I know better than to underestimate Osborn. Especially since last time.” The last part was almost muttered into the phone. 

“Must be fun being the most powerful man in the world,” Marc said, allowing a touch of humor back into his voice. 

“You overestimate Shield’s capabilities. The only power I wield is the equivalent of a kindergarten teacher whose toddlers can shoot.” Stark paused, “well, most of them can anyways.”

Marc snorted, reluctant to end a conversation with anyone vaguely friendly, even if that someone was Tony Stark. But they only had so long, and everything that needed to be verified already had been. 

“I’ll do what I can Marc, just, hold on.”

  
Osborn marched him back to his cell, no less frustrated than he had been earlier. 

“No drugs this time?” Marc asked casually, easily keeping pace with the former villain. 

The glance sent Marc’s way was cold enough to make a glacier jealous, but Marc just smiled. Turns out illegally using Mizadolan wasn’t sustainable when the person you’re using it on had the director of Shield on call.

Sort of.

Well, Osborn didn’t know any better. He could think they were friends. That would be useful, or it would make him more vicious as he tried to hurt Stark through Marc. It could go either way. 

It might even go both ways.

“Your lawyer demanded all drugs go through an outside facility for approval before being used on you or any of the other inmates,” Osborn managed to say through gritted teeth. “Apparently, despite the … uniqueness of our institution’s situation, certain guidelines are necessary to be enforced.” 

“Got in trouble for bending the rules a little too much.” Marc nodded. “Wonder what that feels like.” 

Osborn stopped and Marc almost stumbled into him at the sudden change. He raised an eyebrow. 

“You know what’s tried and true though?”

Marc shook his head, slowly, all senses on alert as a smile crept onto Osborn’s face. 

“Electro-Shock therapy.” Marc stilled, and Osborn only smiled wider. “Of course there’s strict regulations on voltage and how long a session can last. But rest assured, we are nothing if not dedicated to accurate recordings of our process here.” 

Two of Osborn’s goons grabbed Marc’s arms and forced him forward once Osborn started walking again. He didn’t say anything in response, his mind going through countless possibilities and how he could react. What to do next, how to do it. 

But there wasn’t anything he could do right now.

“And since you’ve shown obvious displays of increased, superhuman strength it’s only natural that our care of you is increased to those levels, wouldn’t you say?”

Marc’s mouth was dry, dread pooling in his gut as he was dragged to an unfamiliar room. “It’s the middle of the day.”

“Is it?” Osborn’s voice reeked of fake sympathy, his sadism shining more clearly through his eyes than anything else. 

The room was barren, with the same brand new white walls and clean tiled floors of the rest of the facility, with a table in the center, next to a large cumbersome machine that Marc _knows_ Osborn could have gotten brand new but clearly didn’t care enough to bother. 

He didn’t let them strap him down easily, the struggle colossally more difficult than the night before as Osborn looked down at him. If he could just snap the bastard's neck, none of this would be a problem. Maybe he’d actually go to jail and work from there. Frank never seemed to be inconvenienced for long by that. 

But no, Marc was the crazy one. 

“Don’t worry, Spector. The doctor here will take great care of you. Since, you know, I have a million things more important to do with my time than babysitting a rogue vigilante that can’t accept his loss.” Osborn stayed just long enough to be sure Marc wasn’t about to escape- though not from lack of trying- before he departed. 

Marc wanted to grab his heart from his chest, rip into him and feed his god. But he couldn’t, not yet.

_Just hold on_.

Eventually, Marc was on the table, straps holding him down as a man who definitely did not have a medical degree connected Marc to the dinosaur of a machine next to him and the only thing Marc could think to do was send a prayer to his god before lightning lit up his brain. 

He found himself lying in a tomb, thick bandages wrapped around him, holding him down. There was a familiar statue looming above him, its eyes burrowed into Marc’s soul as his scream was muffled into the cloth.

Just like that it was gone, the unfamiliar staff of Osborn’s institute were above him once more and he only had seconds before he was in the tomb again, this time he could feel the warmth of the stale air around him, the grit of the sand as he shuffled around inside an open sarcophagus. 

Marc struggled as he bounced between these two worlds, everything melding and molding until he couldn’t remember what was real. 

Until he struggled enough to rip the mummification wrappings from him and sat up, awake, in his own tomb. 

“How… real is this?” Marc didn’t know who he was asking, or what answer he really wanted, but the sound of his voice echoing in the space around him was grounding. 

He stood up.

The tomb was achingly familiar and Marc’s gaze immediately found the eyes of Khonshu staring down at him from his statue, cold and distant. As always. 

There was a cloak hanging from the statue’s back, and Marc felt a tug in his chest, an urge to reach forward and take it around himself, cradled in the power and strength of his god as he did so many years ago.

A lifetime ago. 

This time, he ignored it. Watched a moment longer as it fluttered in the moonlight, a non-existent breeze moving the fabric in a mesmerizing back and forth motion, not unlike a snake luring in its prey. 

There were other things to discover though, more to see before he made a decision. Especially if Marc was where he thought he was. 

And the first thing was the sarcophagus he’d been lying in. It was open, the large stone slab meant to cover the body inside- Marc’s body- had been placed next to it. 

The design was intricately detailed and unmistakable. Moon Knight, the costume and mask clearly etched into the stone in the more ancient style that Marc had become familiar with in his tenure as Khonshu’s avatar. 

“Marc Spector died here.” He said, his hand moving of its own accord to brush over the carved mask. 

“ **And then he stood up.** ”


	4. Branching paths

“It was boring.” Marc said, standing up and looking around.

“ **So you’ve said.”** Khonshu’s voice reverberated around him, filling the chamber, louder than Marc had ever heard him before.

In the beginning Marc would only hear Khonshu in dreams, and rarely even then. A mysterious force guiding him and shaping him as he moved through life.

Now he kinda wished he’d shut up once in a while.

Marc crossed the room to one of the branching tunnels, the moonlight not quite reaching far enough down the path for him to see where it would end.

He studied the path, curious as to where it would lead, but didn’t move to leave the chamber just yet. Instead he turned his head to study the glyphs drawn delicately into the wall next to it.

_Here lies the night of the moon._

Marc smirked, “nice, they say these kinds of things about all of your avatars?”

“ **No.** ” Khonshu didn’t bother to elaborate, so Marc rolled his eyes and fought against any feeling of pride he felt at the words. Who knew what he really meant, it wasn’t exactly like Marc was the best of the MoonKnights. He’d met her.

Saw her sacrifice everything.

He moved to the other tunnel, this one was lit by torches, the carvings of the wall etched as far down as Marc could see and likely ever further. It felt familiar, comfortable, but it was also clearly worn from use, and not well taken care of.

Marc looked back at the statue in the middle of his tomb, “where does this lead?”

“ **Exactly where you think it does.”**

Cryptic bastard. Of course he couldn’t just _tell_ Marc anything. Where would the fun be in that.

Well, if he was going to go down a suspicious tunnel leading into his own grave he might as well go all the way and explore the creepy one.

Turning on his heel, Marc stalked back towards Khonshu’s statue and ripped the cloak from its shoulders before tying it around him and stalking towards the unlit tunnel.

“ **Are you sure you want to go that way, my son? The other path may collapse if you fail to care for it.”**

Marc didn’t stop. “It’s held on this long, it can wait a little longer.”

Khonshu didn’t reply, and Marc almost looked back to see if he was still there, in the stone of the statue, or if he had occupied himself elsewhere entirely.

The path was long and winding, every once in a while Marc would see a section of wall with glyphs painted onto it. But unlike the ones in the main chamber, these ones were faded, difficult to translate.

Some didn’t make any sense at all.

 _He drinks the blood of sacrifice_ , was the only thing even vaguely translatable. And it didn’t do much to put Marc at ease.

The air was putrid, difficult to breath in and smelled more like death than even the chamber Marc had woken up in. That and dust. Lots and lots of dust.

He came across a branch in the path, this chamber even darker, the stone floor covered thickly in sand. But once Marc stepped into it, it started collapsing. The walls and ceiling fell in heavy chunks and then crumbled into sand themselves.

“ _Shit._ ” Marc cursed before quickly peddling back into the hallway. “What the hell was that?!”

“ **Something very old that won’t be missed.”**

Marc rolled his eyes. Of course, leave it to Marc to accidentally stumble into doing Khonshu’s dirty work.

Khonshu was standing above him, skeletal bird head looming over Marc as he caught his breath. It wasn’t as comforting a sight as Khonshu seemed to think.

He cast his gaze further down the path, “how much longer does this go for?”

“ **Who says it ends?”**

“How many hearts do I have to feed you before you actually give me just _one_ solid answer?”

Khonshu laughed, “ **I certainly wouldn’t say no to more hearts, my son.** ”

“But where would the fun be in answering my questions, right?” Marc stood up, dusting the sand off his white suit, because of course he was wearing the same thing as Khonshu.

At least it looked nice.

He continued down the path.

The glyphs only got worse, but there were more chambers, some old and crumbling like the first, others holding strong, well built, but barren.

It was a long time, though how long Marc couldn’t be certain, before he started coming upon the rot. Dark, viscous sludge that at first only obscured a couple of glyphs. But eventually, it seemed to cover everything around him. Thick ropes of the stuff stretching from corner to corner, sometimes so thick it would drip down from the ceiling or coat the floor.

“This is disgusting by the way,” Marc responded, slipping a moon dart into his hand to cut through a particularly thick strand blocking his way.

“ **You think so?** ”

Khonshu’s voice was dark, it held violence in a way Marc hadn’t heard since he killed Knowels and Marc found himself automatically turning around to confront him.

Bushman met his gaze and Marc fell backwards in shock. He looked up quickly after his awkward landing only to see Khonshu as he had been.

“This isn’t my head, is it?” Marc realized, his suspicions crystallizing as he felt the rot continue to fester around him.

“ **Isn’t it?** ” The violence from earlier was held back, thinly restrained. But Marc could feel it skate along his bones, a deeper understanding of his situation falling into place.

Marc swallowed and stood, the rot took hold of him, his once pristine white suit tarnished. “No, it’s _yours.”_

Khonshu laughed again, and this time it wasn’t pleasant. “ **And what is the difference, my son?** ”

Marc woke up in his cell. The session must have been over, his brain felt completely fried.

And newly incentivized. Khonshu showed him those things for a reason. He wouldn’t have bothered if he didn’t think Marc could do something about it.

He almost wished he’d bothered to look down the other tunnel, see if the rot had infected there as well. But he didn’t dwell on it for long. Maybe he could check it out the next time Osborn decided to go Thor Odinson on his head.

Wouldn’t that be a useful power to have right now? Complete control over thunder and lightning. Instead he got stuck playing mind games with an unknowable deity beyond both time and space.

“Don’t you have any cool powers?”

Khonshu appeared before him, and if Marc didn’t know better, he’d almost call him affronted. “ **You didn’t seem to mind when I first chose you as my knight.”**

“Yeah. I also thought the power up was from my fight with Jack Russel.” The werewolf had been the first fight Marc had as Moon Knight officially. Frenchie had tricked the old geezers that hired him into financing his first suit and the rest of the money was given straight to Steven so he could invest it. It had been after that fight that Marc noticed his increased strength, and how it seemed to come and go with the phases of the moon. So he had made an assumption, it wasn't like having Khonshu in his head lending Marc _his_ strength made any _more_ sense than that.

“ **That doesn’t make any sense.”** Marc could feel Khonshu roll his eyes, even if he didn’t technically have them. **"You aren't a dog** **.”**

“No?” Marc said. He was tempted to sit up but the ache behind his eyes hadn’t gone away. He just threw his arms over his face instead, trying to block out what little light was piercing through. “Then why do you always treat me like one?”

“ **You’re being puerile, listen to yourself.”**

“Fetch me this relic, Marc. Beg me for help, Marc. Don’t whine, Marc. Rip out that guy’s heart, Marc,” he paraphrased. “If not a dog, what kind of pet am I?”

Khonshu sighed, “ **you are my son.** ”

Marc didn’t bother to reply. Marc knew the answer, knew what Khonshu was going to say before he’d said it. But he’d wanted to complain anyway. Khonshu was rarely in a mood amicable enough to allow it, and maybe he’d actually listen to Marc at least once.

A guy could dream.

Marc closed his eyes, the fluorescents were too much for him right now. Was it still day? It felt like it had been weeks since his phone call with Stark.

_Just hold on._

How long had he spent in Khonshu’s tunnels anyways? Was time the same here as it was there? Khonshu seemed to have free reign over the passage of time when it suited him, would that apply to the inner workings of their shared mindscape? Clearly some time had passed, or Marc would still be on that table.

Or maybe it was all in his head and Marc really was just completely crazy.

Sometimes Marc felt that would be easier to deal with. But no, if anything, Khonshu was the only thing in Marc’s life he’d ever truly been sure _was_ real. It was everything else that had him lost.

“ **Besides, you’re not that good at fetch.”**

Marc let himself laugh at that. “So fetching is where you draw the line? Sounds like something Steven would be pretty good at.”

“ **Yes,** ” Khonshu agreed easily, “ **he does have a knack for collecting. It’s quite useful at times.** ”

That was suspicious. “What did you have him buy?”

“A better question would be what _didn’t_ he have me buy.” Steven appeared in a corner of the room, just out of sight. “I swear I don’t even get to see most of it before he’s throwing me at another dig-site.”

Jake appeared next. “See? That’s why I don’t do things for him. It’s a slippery slope, do the guy one favor and Bam, suddenly you're in Egypt flirting with some lady you’ve never met trying to get the coordinates of a so far undiscovered moon temple because Khonshu misses his old scythe.”

The headache was finally fading so Marc took the opportunity to glare at Jake. “You do just as much for Khonshu as the rest of us.”

“Well sure,” Jake crosses his arms, “but it’s only shit I _want_ to do.”

Marc wasn’t about to start digging into that pile of bull crap, so he just re-closed his eyes and turned over on the mattress. Maybe he could get some real sleep, without Khonshu pulling him deeper under in an attempt to show him something catastrophic or world ending.

He should have known that was too much to hope for.

A loud bang sounded from the door to his cell and Marc cursed softly. What time was it? How was he supposed to keep a proper schedule if he was constantly drugged or tortured and couldn’t even tell what time it was?

He glared up at the closed window. Did that mean it was night, or had they stopped bothering to open it during the sunlight hours already?

“Enjoy your nap?” an unfamiliar voice asked, smooth and unconcerned. Marc felt unease trickle along his spine, he remembered what he'd done recently. It wasn’t the kind of thing that had people entering his cell unconcerned.

“It was enlightening,” Marc sat up, casting a glance around the room. His alters were still there, tucked into the shadows and watching, curiously. But Khonshu was nowhere to be seen. Figured.

“Funny,” the man said, he had a thick accent Marc had trouble placing, North African maybe? “Having a sense of humor is a good sign.”

He was tall, thin, and decidedly not the kind of guy Marc had ever had a problem taking down a peg or two with his fists alone, Khonshu or no. But that only served to unnerve Marc more.

Why was he here? Was it to catch Marc off guard? Maybe he was some kind of trap to get Marc to attack a person that didn’t have the kinda rap sheet he was used to so Stark would leave him in Osborn’s less than friendly hands. He really had no way of knowing.

Khonshu was the one that could see hearts after all. Marc didn’t actually have any powers he could claim as his own.

“It wasn’t a joke,” he said, but the man just nodded.

“You’ve caused quite a fright amongst the staff, I’m afraid,” he said, stepping further into the room. The door was left open, but Marc wasn’t dumb enough to run for it just yet. He may not know why the stranger was here, but he could tell that was a trap from a mile and a half away.

The man kept talking, walking slowly towards the wall Marc had been sleeping against. The one under the closed window. “I’m sure that wasn’t your intent, but regressions like this do tend to leave your caretakers disheartened. It can be frustrating to see progress so suddenly lost.”

Marc stood up fully before the man could get any closer and the man stopped. Marc was taller than him, was taller than most people to be fair. He didn’t seem intimidated. Marc’s fists itched.

It had to be a trap.

“What if it was my intention?” Marc’s voice was almost a growl, he could feel the edges between him and the Moon Knight blurring. “My god is the devourer of hearts, he cannot live on faith alone. Light in the dark exists only so long as darkness spreads.”

“Is he real?” the man asked suddenly, catching Marc off guard. The question was genuine, and frankly a bit earnest and Marc couldn’t remember if anyone he knew had ever actually asked him that. At least, not without already having decided the answer for themselves. “This Khonshu that dictates your actions? I can’t imagine what that must be like, having something so foreign to the human consciousness wrapped around your mind.”

“What?” Marc didn’t take a step back, if only because of the wall behind him. This entire encounter was throwing him off, he’d only just woken from one of Khonshu’s visions and now this? Why?

“I understand,” which was entirely unfair because Marc didn’t understand even a little bit, “If that’s the case I’m afraid normal therapy and pharmaceuticals won’t be much effective. We still have hope, you see, for more physical things like electro-therapy and the like, but if there really is an ancient deity in your head the only way to recovery is a full separation.”

Marc remembered what it was like when Khonshu had left him alone, a wreck of his former self, barely able to stand. And while Marc hardly liked his god, he was devoted, he believed, and he wasn’t about to let some stranger pretend he could take that away.

“Good luck with that,” Marc said.

The man just smiled and lifted his hand to play gently with a medallion that hung around his neck, a heavy thing that Marc really should have noticed earlier if it had any kind of magic to it. At least, if he was magic it would explain his easy belief of something like Khonshu in contrast to men of science like Osborn and Stark.

_Just hold on._

“Well,” the man clapped his hands together and smiled, “I only came to get a good look at you, I’m no psychiatrist or anything. But I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again soon enough.”

Marc didn’t react. He didn’t care to give the stranger any more acknowledgement than he already had. He was already forming plans, looking into what this man could possibly try and do, wondering what kind of power could be used to try and separate a god from his avatar. Would it be like the time with Daimon Hellstrom? It wasn't like Khonshu was possessing him directly like that, he was just... there. All the time. He didn’t think anything existed that could truly separate them, but it also wasn’t like he had ever tried.

The only person who had wanted that, who both hated Marc and believed in Khonshu enough to try and steal him for their own was Randall. And Frank had killed him.

Could this man be working as part of the cult of Khonshu? Would Osborn even know enough about them to get one on his staff? It didn’t seem likely, he was more of the genetic mutations and weapons of mass-destruction kind of person. Had he slipped in under the radar now that Marc was trapped with nowhere else to go?

Did they think Khonshu would abandon him so easily?

“You’re not going to ask why?” the stranger almost seemed to pout. Marc’s greatest weapon was often his silence, it encouraged others to talk. “It could be important.”

“I assumed you were just really looking for a broken bone or two.” At least when Marc could control his mouth.

The man kept talking anyways, “Well, I guess you’ll just have to wait and see then.”

The stranger left, the door closing quickly behind him and Marc turned to the corner when he felt Khonshu’s presence reappear. “One of yours?” he asked bitterly. It was better to narrow it down now, if Khonshu bothered to answer with something other than his usual cryptic nonsense.

But Khonshu wasn’t looking towards him, his sharp, angular bird skull was still tilted towards the door when he answered, “ **I want that one’s heart, my son. Do you think you could get it for me?”**

Marc didn’t let himself bask too long in the sudden weight that seemed to fall from his shoulders. Khonshu would never ask so directly for someone’s heart if they were in any way associated with him or the creepy sideways cult that liked to throw his name around. But he also held no interest in the hearts of innocents and Marc’s path felt like it had gotten just a little bit clearer.

Moonlit in the night as it were.

“Of course,” he kept the danger out of his voice. There really was so much more to discover here than what was kept inside these padded walls, and Marc was confident he was going to rip into the heart of it soon. Rip into it and offer it up to his god.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uhhhh I don't know what I'm doing. is this even any good? IDk. I'm trying.


End file.
